iOS 17.4 brings a few new emoji characters to your iPhone, including direction options such as facing right or left that are available for six people emoji.
The six completely new emoji characters coming to your iPhone’s emoji keyboard with iOS 17.4 include shaking heads to express approval or disapproval, a phoenix rising from the ashes, a broken chain, an edible brown mushroom and lime.
There are also four new family emoji combinations—adult, adult, child; adult, child, child; adult, child; and adult, adult, child, child. They’re all part of the emoji 15.1 recommendation that the Unicode Consortium approved in September 2024.
iOS 17.4 brings more emoji characters to your iPhone
As always, Emojipedia has mocked up the latest emoji. Please note that Apple’s implementation may look slightly different to fit its design language.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of this update is a new feature that allows you to choose the direction a supported emoji character is facing, whether left or right.
The new directional options are available for six pre-existing people emoji: A person walking, a person running, a person kneeling, a person with a white cane, a person in a manual wheelchair and a person in a motorized wheelchair.
Taking into account all the different directional options, genders and skin tones, there are 108 new direction-specifying versions of the above characters.
Unicode Version 15.1 will include 118 new RGI #emoji ZWJ sequences, 108 of which are directional variants of existing emoji, and are expected to start showing up on 📱s, 💻s, and other platforms sometime early next year → https://t.co/ooTcjrayiF #çµµæ–‡å— #Unicode15_1 pic.twitter.com/b2OgM5StR1
— The Unicode Consortium (@unicode) September 6, 2023
When will the new emoji arrive?
Apple is currently testing iOS 17.4 and other OS updates with its developers and beta testers. The operating systems will be available to the public in March. After installing these updates, you’ll be able to use the latest emoji characters and options across your Apple devices to express yourself visually.
As always, people you’re communicating with will need to have the latest updates installed to actually see these new emoji characters. Support for the Unicode 15.1 emoji will also roll out to other platforms, including Android and Windows.